Home / Sports channel / News | Monday 06 February 2012 |
The new Roman Emperor is Greek |
Panathinaikos had a couple of good chances in the first half-hour as Djibril Cisse narrowly failed to make decent contact with the ball at the edge of the six-yard box with only the goalkeeper to beat, while Simao's shot at the 24th minute went agonizingly wide of the right post of Doni.
Djibril Cisse made it 1-1 six minutes before half-time from the spot after Sotiris Ninis was fouled inside the box by Daniele De Rossi.
Four minutes later Ninis stole the ball 10 metres outside the box and sent his right-foot shot to bounce next to Doni and hit the net to give the Greeks the lead.
As if that hadn't been enough, Ninis took the ball again in the halfway line, toyed with Roma's Matteo Brighi before feeding it to Cisse on the right who managed to slot the ball in from a tight angle in first-half in jury time.
De Rossi made it 3-2 at the 67th minute as he picked up the ball from a Tzorvas clearance in the box with the Greek defenders being slow in their response.
Two minutes on Panathinaikos almost made it 4-2 as first Costas Katsouranis and then Dimitris Salpigidis hit the woodwork from close range.
Roma kept asking questions at the Greek defence in the remainder of the game, but had needed to score a total of five goals on the night in order to overturn the visitors' advantage.
In the 90th minute Panathinaikos was left with 10 men as Katsouranis got his second booking and will miss the first match of the next round.
The Greens were dealt a blow just before the match as they were deprived of their skipper, Giorgos Karagounis who had the fever.
However it was the absence of Roma's Luca Toni and captain Francesco Totti that led to Roma being far worse than the team that had gone unbeaten for 20 games from October until last week.
source - www.sportingreece.com
